To the Editor:

In a letter in SMN’s April 10 edition, a former official of the Haywood County Democratic Party challenged Christians to defend an array of typically awkward Trumpian statements and actions during Holy Week that she characterizes as “unholy.” What is notable about the letter is not what it contains, but what it does not contain, which is any evaluation of how the actions of her party’s current national standard-bearer — indeed how the actions and policy aspirations of her party as a whole — bear even a remote resemblance to genuine Christianity. 

Upon seeing Hannah McLeod’s recent guest column published in these pages on May 29, my first reaction was that it belongs in the same category as those rants whose message boils down to, “It’s da Jooz.”  

Ms. McLeod’s seething anger about what she perceives, rightly or wrongly, as the victimization of the identity groups she most cares about may explain her passion, and may even call forth sympathy for their — and her — wounds. However, her fervor does not excuse her vicious caricatures of the views and motivations of those with whom she disagrees and her distortion of facts that she should have checked before writing about them. As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” A basic principle of good analysis — which she ought to have been taught at App State — is to base it on primary sources before expressing definite opinions. This she evidently has not done.